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TTC worker compensated for lost wages after being arrested, suspended

On July 28, 2014, TTC employee Tyson Hu took home $5,060 in cash and $34,407 in tokens, tickets, and passes. Coincidentally, Durham Regional Police raided Hu’s home the next day, seizing drugs and the TTC property.

In July 2014, TTC fare collector Tyson Hu took home $5,060.20 in cash and $34,407.70 in tokens, tickets at the end of his shift. Then the funds were grabbed by police the next day when they raided his Scarborough home as part of an unrelated search warrant and because Hu could not return the money he was suspended by the TTC. He has since got his job back. (Marcus Oleniuk / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

A fare collector who took home $40,000 in TTC funds and then lost it in a drug raid has been awarded compensation from the transit agency after he challenged his suspension from the job.

The case is a bizarre three-year saga involving marijuana, police, and TTC tokens. During that time, transit employee Tyson Hu was arrested, suspended without pay for more than a year, reinstated and finally awarded months of back pay for some of the time he wasn’t allowed to work.

In March, an arbitrator ruled on the grievance the TTC workers’ union filed on Hu’s behalf. The details of this story are taken from that ruling, which was based on a statement of facts filed by the TTC and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113. Through the union, Hu declined to comment on the case.

The trouble began just after 2 p.m. on July 28, 2014, when Hu, a Scarborough resident who had worked as a fare collector since 2011, finished his shift at Lawrence station.

According to agency policy, fare collectors are supposed to lock all money and fare media they have in their possession — which is known as a fund — in a secure place on TTC property at the end of every shift.

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Instead, Hu took the $5,060.20 in cash and $34,407.70 in tokens, tickets, and passes in his fund home with him.

In what appears to have been a coincidence, early the next morning the Durham Regional Police executed a search warrant at Hu’s home as part of a major drug bust launched with the Toronto police dubbed Project Bermuda. The police seized various items in the raid, including hashish, marijuana and the TTC fund.

Hu was held in custody for several hours, and released the same day. He was charged with “various offences,” according to the arbitration ruling.

According to TTC spokesperson Brad Ross, taking thousands of dollars worth of cash and fare media home “can be a fireable offence, but usually only when it’s connected to theft.”

“When the money is taken home and returned without consequence, we still take action, but it is considered a procedural violation and provided none of our money is lost, we use progressive discipline,” he said.

In Hu’s case, he couldn’t return the fund because it had been confiscated by the police. When he came back to work a few days after his arrest, a TTC supervisor asked him to produce the fund for an audit. When he was unable to do so, the TTC suspended him without pay.

The police held on to the fund as Hu’s criminal case proceeded. It wasn’t until June 2015, almost one year after the raid, that the Crown attorney alerted the TTC it was ready to be returned. Even then, the TTC had to file a court application to get it back.

In his decision, arbitrator Owen Shime wrote that he was baffled by the delay.

“It is difficult to understand why some sensible arrangement between the Crown or the police could not have been made for the return of the fare media at least . . . which were clearly the property of the TTC,” he wrote.

Neither the Durham police nor the Public Prosecution Service of Canada could immediately say Wednesday why it took so long to return the fund.

The TTC finally got its property back in September 2015, and reinstated Hu that month in a position that didn’t involve handling fares. In October of that year, Hu plead guilty to simple drug possession and was given an absolute discharge.

As a result of the discharge, “we were unable to take any further disciplinary action against him,” said Ross.

In the arbitration, Local 113 argued that TTC should have allowed Hu to back to work sooner because the agency was aware that the fund was in police custody. The union also said he should be “fully compensated” for the loss of pay and benefits during the time when he should have been allowed to work.

The TTC countered that it had offered to reinstate Hu if he agreed to certain conditions, but he refused and therefore wasn’t entitled to compensation.

The offer of reinstatement came in November 2014, more than three months after Hu was suspended. The TTC said he could come back to work if he agreed to certain terms, including taking a drug test before restarting the job, and submitting to unannounced tests thereafter.

In his decision, Shime wrote that Hu had committed “a significant breach of his duties and responsibilities as a collector” and should be subject to “significant discipline.”

“Individual collectors cannot go off on a frolic of their own . . . with the trust funds that they have in their care,” he wrote.

But Shime agreed with the union that the conditions the TTC tried to place on Hu’s reinstatement in 2014 were unreasonable.

He noted that Hu wasn’t terminated for the off-duty conduct that led to his arrest, or for using drugs while at work. The drug test provision “was not only unrelated to the reasons for his discharge but was an affront to both his dignity and privacy,” he wrote.

Because the TTC’s conditions were unreasonable, Hu was not obligated to accept the offer of temporary reinstatement, Shime determined. He ruled Hu was entitled to compensation for the nine-month period between the conditional offer and his reinstatement in September 2015, during which time the TTC didn’t allow him to work.

The two parties reached a settlement on July 12, the terms of which are confidential. Hu remains employed in the TTC’s collectors division but isn’t allowed to handle money or fare media, according to the agency.

Kevin Morton, secretary-treasurer of Local 113, said it’s “absolutely” appropriate that Hu is back on the job. He noted that Hu paid a penalty by being suspended without pay for four months after he lost the fund, and that the TTC didn’t lose any revenue because it was eventually returned in its entirety.

Morton said what complicated the situation was the police investigation, which he asserted was “outside of” Hu’s breach of policy. “He was caught up in it. The TTC tried to combine them,” Morton said.

He added that collectors taking their funds off TTC property is “not a common practice.”

Ross, the TTC spokesperson, said incidents like this are “incredibly rare,” and “will be eliminated” once the agency replaces its older media with the Presto electronic fare card.

“We don’t want our employees moving cash and fare . . . for their own safety, as well as for the security of TTC revenue,” he said.

Correction – July 24, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version to update the photo caption.

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